Communication skills are similar to other clinical skills in that they constitute a bridging competency; they don't belong to any given department. Therefore they are always at risk of being shortchanged in the curriculum and not addressed adequately. Our interest group believes that this is a crucial set of skills for physicians; hence we want to better coordinate our efforts in this area.
Exploring this we have found that even without much overarching guidance there are many remarkable efforts already in place to advance our students’ communication skills. They tend however to be fairly localized within one course, clerkship or site and don't necessarily reach all of our students. There are also some communication skills which are either poorly addressed within the curriculum or totally absent.
Questions to consider
- What communication skills are important and necessary for students?
- Communication with patients
- Communication with medical team
- Communicating medical information
- Types of communication (verbal, non-verbal, electronic)
- Where do we emphasize communication throughout the entire four years?
- What do we already know?
- What do we need to discover?
- Where are there gaps and redundancies (effective and ineffective)?
- How should we address the gaps and redundancies?
Some resources